DID BOOMERS MISS THE PASSION TRAIN? Time to reinvent?

Did
the Baby Boomer generation miss the passion train in the first half (at least)
of their career life? Is that why they’ve been telling their children, mentees,
students and coachees to “follow their passion”? Why was career passion not a
central theme for the Boomers even though work has been a driving force in so
many of their lives that one of the generation’s notable characteristics is
“workaholism.

Many
of the Boomers’ parents lived through the Great Depression and because
risk-averse. So they urged their Boomer children to go into respectable and
seemingly secure professions or work for big companies that were expected to
last and take care of their employees. Boomers may have taken risks in their
personal lives (“drugs, sex and rock & roll”) in their youth, but less so
in their career choices. And Boomers didn’t typically have mentors and coaches
in early career to urge and guide them to follow a passion.

Further,
once they made a comfortable living, given adult responsibilities, it was hard
to give up the money and status.

In
addition to these factors, Marc Miller of Career Pivot, a Boomer in his mid-50s
who has found his work passion, cites less than supportive family structures
and dysfunction. I don’t know that there were more dysfunctional families when
Boomers were growing up, and the divorce rate was lower than today ori n the
Gen Xers’ and Yers’ formative years. But it is true that parents were not as
child-centric as today.

He
also thinks that Boomers were more random in the degrees they sought, rather
than strongly driven to a particular career other than what was expected of
them. Many of them in college and graduate school had the goal of avoiding
serving in the Vietnam War (there was a draft), which pursuing education at
least helped delay.

After
years in a career and perhaps delayed gratification, many Boomers have found
their passion in work or are following a passion now to reinvent themselves in
a new career. Perhaps this
reinforces Cal Newport’s point as expressed in my earlier blog post Follow
Your Passion to Your Next Destination that you find your passion after
working at something and finding you are really good at it.